Protester Wins Right To Shed Top

March 9, 2005|By Jeff Libby, Sentinel Staff Writer

DAYTONA BEACH -- Liz Book is back to bare her breasts for women everywhere.

And this time, she will not be arrested, city officials said. The 43-year-old stay-at-home mom has obtained a written legal document from city officials that allows her to drop her top on Sunday, the last day of Bike Week, in a parking lot just west of the Main Street bridge.

The self-described "top free" revolutionary from Ormond Beach is losing her shirt as a political protest against the city's anti-nudity law, which she says the city uses to humiliate young women at special events and abuses as a revenue source.

The fine for a woman exposing her breasts is $253.

Book and the naturists and nudists who have gathered to support her say women should have the right to go shirtless everywhere men can. They also are fighting against increasingly strict laws, in Florida and elsewhere in the nation, that they say equate public nudity with lewd and lascivious behavior and have cost people jobs or their parental rights.

"This is an awakening that needs to happen," Book said. "I don't see where a breast has ever hurt anyone."

City officials say the ordinance against nudity and the steep fines that go with it are intended to maintain minimum decency standards and to prevent the large crowds at special events, with many people drinking, from spiraling into a riot.

"It's there to set community standards and God knows Daytona needs to raise the bar," Daytona Beach City Commissioner Darlene Yordon said.

"Because of the street parties we have here, there's been the appearance that we've promoted lawlessness. . .and nudity promotes lawlessness," Yordon said.

Book's challenge of her arrest for baring her breasts in public last year remains in court. But Larry Walters, an Orlando area First-Amendment rights attorney representing her, said the city's exemption for nudity that is constitutionally protected, such as in a theatrical production, is clear. She should not have been arrested, he said.

"This was a large city government trying to shut down political speech with their police force," Walters said. "It was appalling that they arrested this lady in the middle of her protest."

But Walters applauded the city's willingness, with conditions, to allow Book's protest this Sunday.

The agreement was signed Feb. 22 by Walters and assistant city attorney Greg McDole. It allows Book to stage her protest from noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday without threat of arrest or police intimidation as long as Book screens the stage and does not encourage toplessness by participants outside of the screened area.

McDole signed the agreement, he said, based on case law, but is awaiting a verdict in Book's pending case.

"Nudity, you know, topless conduct, has always been prohibited in Florida," McDole said. "You need to try to protect the unsuspecting public."

But such activists as Shirley Mason of Miami say the effort to protect the public against nudity is leading to legal excesses that cost people their jobs and their parental rights.

Book herself says she has been barred from helping at her daughter's school functions because of another arrest for baring her breasts in 1998.

"We're seeing cities and counties and states go berserk over nudity. They've gone overboard on this," said Mason, who hopes to attend the protest in Daytona Beach.

"They're making mere nudity a criminal offense, where before it was the lewd and lascivious behavior that was the crime."